A typical disc drive includes a base to which various structural components of the disc drive are mounted. A top cover cooperates with the base to form an internal, sealed environment for the disc drive. The components include a spindle motor, which rotates one or more discs at a high speed. Information is written to and read from tracks on the discs through the use of an actuator assembly, which rotates during a seek operation about a bearing shaft assembly positioned adjacent the discs. The actuator assembly includes at least one actuator arm, which extends towards the discs, with one or more flexures extending from each of the actuator arms. Mounted at the distal end of each of the flexures is a head, which includes an air bearing slider enabling the head to fly in close proximity adjacent the corresponding surface of the associated disc.
Free particles in the disc drive have an adverse affect on drive reliability. In fact, particles are currently believed to be the leading cause of failure in disc drives. Hard particles (e.g., aluminum oxide, silicone oxide, silicon carbide, titanium carbide, titanium nitride, and tungsten carbide) may be dislodged from components within a disc drive by handling, startup, operation and shut down. These particles are transported throughout the drive via air currents produced by the spinning discs within the drive. Of particular concern are hard airborne particles that enter the head-disc interface. These particles can scratch the disc surface or become embedded in the disc, leading to catastrophic failures and/or irrecoverable data loss. Additionally, particles under the slider can damage the sensitive head transducer and possibly prevent any further read/write operations of the disc drive.
Presently, disc drive component vendors and disc drive manufacturers use sonication to analyze the particles that may be dislodged from a disc drive component for purposes of quality control and design. However, it is believed that sonication can break down the material of the tested component and dislodge particles that would not be dislodged in a normal disc drive environment. Thus, it is thought that sonication produces unrealistic data and that it may hide the presence of particles that have smaller concentrations but a larger impact on disc drive failure.
Additionally, sonication requires undue handling of the tested component. More specifically, a user must put the part on a holder; lower the holder into a beaker that contains water; lower the beaker into an open bath; apply ultrasonic waves to the bath; remove the beaker from the bath; remove the component from the beaker; pour the beaker contents into a funnel that is connected to a vacuum source; and spray the funnel to wash down any remaining particles.
Accordingly there is a need for a system that requires little handling to capture particles from disc drive components and that avoids dislodging particles that would not be dislodged in a disc drive environment. The present invention provides a solution to this and other problems, and offers other advantages over the prior art.